The Beginner’s Guide to Fallout 4

It’s a rare thing for the entire games industry, or at least its Western front (as Japan is more fickle in its brand loyalty), to stop in mutual celebration and awe of a game’s release. Aged like fine wine, anticipation and respect of that caliber is reserved for only the most special occasions. Dark Souls fans are frequent drinkers of the stuff, as are those versed in Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda. But few hold a candle to Bethesda, a studio which, with its one-two punch of Elder Scrolls and Fallout, has sparked more moments of silence than most any other creator. With Fallout 4 now out in the wild, to the immense relief of countless pre-ordering Vault-heads, Bethesda has wowed the industry yet again.

At the same time, and perhaps more importantly, Fallout 4 has drawn in countless newcomers, all determined to figure out what the hell seemingly everyone else—hordes of fans and commenters, YouTube commercials and reams of posters alike—is on about. What are the bobble head dolls dotting the game aisles of their local supercenters? Why has Todd Howard’s ecstatic expression overtaken the Internet and its many meme factories? And why are the boys pipped?

What is Fallout, really?

With those and similar questions in mind, let’s revisit and define what makes Fallout, Fallout, and how best to approach Fallout 4’s promising new wasteland.

The nukes came down to Boston

At its core, Fallout is a post-apocalyptic role-playing game predicated upon worlds as open as its stories, neatly wrapped by a love of shooting things, bludgeoning things and crafting things with which to bludgeon and shoot. The series emphasizes player choice at every opportunity, be it telling off a rowdy NPC, allocating hard-earned resources and experience, or deciding how deeply a given warehouse or building should be explored. Though the overarching theme is best described as steampunk, each Fallout is shaped by its setting. Fallout 3 saw players trot about various highlights of North America, whereas Fallout: New Vegas focused on the dusty old West. Fallout 4 invites players to the still-kicking ruins of Boston and emanates the eclectic vibe of America’s 1990s, though its warped and technologically absurd appearance belies it.

In essence, you’ve survived a nuclear holocaust and found the entire world—or at least what you can see of it—ripe for the taking. Explore, converse, salvage and destroy as you see fit. And start here:

SPECIAL

Your SPECIAL score is the basis of your character. Though you can choose from a wealth of perks, traits and skills, which we’ll get into shortly, it’s your SPECIAL that best reflects your play style. Each letter of the iconic acronym signifies a stat:

• Strength increases your carrying capacity and melee damage. A touch of Strength does every character good in the form of an expanded inventory, but only those who prefer an axe to a gun should consider investing heavily. Strength-based perks revolve around melee attacks, equipment wield requirements and inventory space.

• Perception is a broader skill which influences your accuracy in VATS (the game’s stop-motion auto-target combat system), and your ability to lockpick and steal. Perception is also useful in conversation; if your level is high enough, your character will perceive opportunities otherwise missed. Perception perks support gun-based (often sniper-based) combat, and offer miscellaneous bonuses like improved night vision and threat detection.

• Endurance directly affects the recovery of your hit points, as well as the depletion of your action points (think energy). Its perks focus on improving your resistance to myriad damage types, as well as your ability to make the most of the land’s resources.

• Charisma is fairly simple: the higher your Charisma, the more silver your tongue. Charisma influences your social skills, or your ability to persuade other people, both in conversation and through your actions. A high Charisma score unlocks countless conversation paths and options, so it’s generally recommended to put a few points into it to get the most out of your adventure. A variety of perks offering dialogue and karma bonuses sweeten the deal.

• Intelligence is arguably the most fundamental of the lot, as it determines how quickly you level up. It is also tied to perks that let you manipulate technology such as robots, heal yourself more effectively, and hack into informative and valuable mainframes. Like Charisma, moderate Intelligence, at a minimum, is recommended to ensure a healthy pace.

• Agility is the most obvious skill in SPECIAL: it affects how many action points you have, as well as your stealthiness. If you like sneaking around and infiltrating enemy camps undetected, you’re going to want a fair amount of Agility, both as a groundwork and as a means to access upper-tier perks. Otherwise, you can consider skimping on the stuff to buff up other stats, perhaps using other means to improve your action points.

• Luck is a jack-of-all-trades’ best friend; it provides moderate bonuses to all skills and abilities, as well as base critical chance in combat. It will also help you find valuable loot, obtain rare monster drops, and often plays a part in bizarre encounters peppered throughout the wasteland. It does everything and nothing, and generally makes for an amusing trek.

Perks, Traits and Skills

In addition to, and largely as a result of, your SPECIAL score, you’ve a wealth of abilities to choose from in Fallout. These come in perks, traits and skills. Perks augment specific abilities (increased reload speed, decreased radiation damage, discover more bottle caps, etc.) and can even trigger instances such as the aid of mysterious allies and highly combustible knock-outs. Traits are more definitive and offer more significant bonuses than perks, almost always granting more of something and less of something else. Next to SPECIAL, skills are the broadest category and reflect your competency in areas like medicine, lockpicking, speech, bartering, unarmed and armed combat, and plenty more. Bear in mind, with each new release the Fallout franchise rearranges its abilities, drawing and redrawing the lines separating perks, skills and traits. Even so, the basic plan remains unchanged: use all of these to further refine and accentuate your play style, fill in your weak points, and foster unique opportunities.

To get the most out of your efforts, pick up some cumulative abilities—highly relevant abilities that grow more valuable with time—as early as you can. Once you’re confident in dispatching enemies, get something that improves your loot quality or experience rate, as their bonuses will add up exponentially in the long haul. Oh, and don’t neglect medicine. It determines how many hit points you get out of healing items, among other things both core and cumulative. It will save you plenty of money and deaths, and it’s something every vault dweller benefits from.

There’s also a bit of a balancing act to be had with lockpicking and science, both of which let you unlock safes and other caches. You’ll come across quite a lot of containers in the wasteland, and few things sting more than lacking the level to unlock their secrets. Here’s a tip born from experience: balance science and lockpicking for a time, and after getting both to a moderate level, put points into one or the other. Especially in later stages of the game, you’ll frequently find that only one of the two skills is necessary to loot most containers. Often, you can deftly lockpick a safe or override it manually via a hacked terminal. So instead of the widest, cast the richest net. Prioritize the skill you most enjoy and ensure basic competency in the other. Doing so allows you to hit the bulk of containers and still reap the big boy bucks of high-level ones. Your wallet will thank you for it.

Much the same is true for combat, in which you’ll want to find a niche between guns, lasers and melee. All three can get the job done, albeit it at different distances, so simply choose your favorite. In addition, try and maintain a decent knowledge of explosives, as the many things that go boom in Fallout can be potent problem solvers.

Factions and Relationships

Fallout has historically handled relationship management different from, say, Mass Effect or The Witcher. Fallout focuses less on the intimacy of individual relationships and more on the cohesiveness of your communication network. In other words, it’s about who you know, not how you close you are.

Though dozens dot the landscape, there are essentially two types of factions in Fallout: minor and allegiance. A minor faction might be a single merchant or store owner, a band of mercenaries or a group of talkative ghouls. On the whole, minor factions are walking quest lines; if you pursue them, you’ll likely wind up ferrying some odd jobs or swatting a few baddies. You can generally work with as many minor factions as you like, and it often pays to build a client list. Working with certain NPCs early on can alter quests down the road, unlocking new rewards and even areas. Helping out the NPCs in a particular settlement, especially merchants and the like, can also yield supply caches and reduced shop prices.

However, there’s always the risk of stepping on somebody’s toes by helping a faction. You may even inadvertently kill off one faction at the behest of another. To prevent angering the factions or people you’re most interested in, try speaking to most everyone in the immediate area before accepting a job. You might find that somebody else is offering the same job but with a reward more suitable for your character.

More significant are allegiance factions, the likes of the Brotherhood of Steel. More than quest lines on legs, these factions represent optional encampments—large groups of people and resources that can only be accessed after you’ve pledged loyalty to them. While helpful, allegiance factions are neither required nor complicated. By and large, each one caters to a specific play style. What’s more, you can easily get through any Fallout game as a lone wolf. Still, placing your allegiance well can yield invaluable resources and information, including many unique abilities. Again, the trick is asking around and considering your options before putting your eggs in one basket. At the very least, don’t go pledging allegiance until you’ve gained quite a few levels.

On top of factions, you’re also afforded a companion, and that’s in addition to your immortal canine partner, Dogmeat. Fallout companions make for colorful conversation, though most fulfill the same practical purpose: being a pack mule. That said, some do offer utilities such as minor shops or cheap repairs, which ups their worth considerably. Even so, it’s often best to choose your companion from a traveler’s standpoint rather than a pragmatist’s. Pick whoever you find fun, because they’re all pretty worthless in combat, especially if you like to play stealthily. Fallout NPCs have always been about as subtle as a startled cat in a suit of castanets, and I don’t expect that to change in Fallout 4.